


We Who See Thestrals

by bygosscarmine



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Compliant, Complete, Completed, Domestic, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Not Epilogue Compliant, Post-Canon, Post-Hogwarts, Post-War, Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes, Wizarding World (Harry Potter)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:53:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24041641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bygosscarmine/pseuds/bygosscarmine
Summary: The war is long over, but it's left its mark. When Ron asks George to give Luna Lovegood a job, it seems like easy charity. Luna's not just a batty teenager influenced by her conspiracy theorist father, anymore, though. And George has been missing a key ingredient to the magic of joke-shop enthusiasm for a while now.Will the shadow of the past come between them or help them make a bridge into the future?
Relationships: Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley, Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Luna Lovegood/George Weasley
Comments: 13
Kudos: 41





	1. Luna Lovegood Gets A Joke-Shop Job

"Look," said Ron, "I don't think she'll last here long, either, but with The Quibbler and everything Luna doesn't need money. She just needs something to do. Hermione should be the one asking, but she said she was delegating it to me. So pretend this was a super-persuasive pitch on why an old friend should be given a chance."

George cocked an eyebrow at his brother, more to make him squirm than because he was particularly interested in arguing. Ron was a decent shop clerk and a better trainer, since he liked to get out of doing things but didn't like to see them done wrong. Until their youngest was old enough to go away to school, Ron was the home parent which meant he only could work the slowest hours of the day. George also knew it was good to let his people show some initiative, even if the person was Ron.

They had a lot of young people come and go, since the job wasn't all playing with the products, and George had the bad habit of moving anyone with potential up to R&D (Recreation & Development) or to pop-up sites. Which often turned into managing new stores. Dennis Creevey had been their biggest success so far, though the Hogsmeade location was a no-brainer. Dennis wasn't much of an innovator himself, but he sold all their newest products with the passion of a very small child and the tenacity of a survivor.

They all were survivors, their generation of Hogwarts students. Some of them, like George, had decided that the best thing to create in the world was a time of innocence they couldn't even enter. And that's why so many parents bought so much delightful nonsense from Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes.

"I don't mind having you hire and train her," he said, as if having wrestled with himself, "as long as you make sure she doesn't blow up my shop in vengeance for what you did to her house."

He left Ron sputtering an unformed rebuttal, and went through his vanishing cabinet to the lab.

Luna started the next week. That day George was too busy trying to get the topiary algae to form itself with a longer nose to go down to the shop for niceties. When he heard a whump all the way through the door, through the other vanishing cabinet about five miles away, he decided it was time to check in on the new hire. He carefully finished his notes, told Neville he'd call him back and took out the prototype earplugs he'd made, improving the extendible ears beyond all recognition. They really helped when he needed to trouble-shoot things like recalcitrant botany with friends, so he'd given sets to several of the usual suspects and occasionally owled his spare pairs to others. He took off his slimy gloves and went down to the shop.

There was a glittering purple cloud of smoke pluming into an onion shape in the middle of the floor, with a blast-radius of knocked-over toys about five feet in diameter. Ron had taken cover behind the counter, while a white-blonde head was half-obscured in the cloud. There was no doubting this witch, in purple robes with appliques of cabbages dotted around them, was Luna Lovegood.

"Hallo Looney," said George, "I thought that must be you making a bang. My hearing isn't what it used to be, but I heard it clear in my flat down the road."

"Hello, George," said Luna, unperturbed and sliding out of the cloud sideways, as if it were something she had to sneak away from. "The good news is there are no Snorkaks in your shop. If there were, that is, they'd be dead now."

"Good to know. Ron, stop mentally rehearsing your plea to not be fired and clear up this cloud. A simple scouring should take care of it--not using any dark charms, are you, Luna?"

"I don't think so," she said.

"Yes, Scourgify will be fine. Has Ron given you the tour yet?"

George knew himself to be a bit of a ladies' man, so he was mostly unsurprised to find himself grinning winsomely at Luna.

"I believe he was trying," said Luna. "But I'm not always the best at paying attention."

"I see he wasn't giving you the tour properly, then. You don't have to pay attention, just play with everything you think looks fun. Neverstop Pop?"

"Thank you," said Luna, at last looking apprehensive. She glanced at Ron, who didn't even pause in his vanishing wand-waves to say, "You'll taste banana for about six hours, but otherwise harmless."

"Oh, banana!" she said, and took the lolly. Its purple and green swirl of candy was innocent enough, but the stick it was on began smoking a blue color as soon as her tongue touched it.

"I would have pegged you for pink smoke," George noted. "Intriguing."

He showed her around the shop properly. He had really gotten the knack of sales in the early shop days and now around holidays would work the floor himself to keep his hand in. He kept a keen eye on where her eyes fell, and they tested out all the products that he saw some interest in.

Luna may not have been great at paying attention to workplace tours, but she actually had an unusual knack for toys and games. She had blown enough Self-Shaping Bubble Shot to discover that you could somewhat steer the shape by focusing on one of the forms it took, and produced a steady stream of rabbits that were more robust than any bubbles George had seen anyone but Ginny's girl Lily make. He had to gently steer her away to see the sweets area and puzzles. Most adults had disappointingly short attention spans for play, he had found.

But Luna was an adult. Of all his sister's classmates she was the one who had always struck him as a little more childlike than her age, but possibly this was more a determined positivity and self-expression than thoughtless innocence. After all, none of them had gotten this far untouched. Luna had put the Quibbler on the map as the most outspoken political news of the wizarding world, soliciting articles about the need for reform in the Ministry, magical education, and species equity. She had to be made of a springy sort of steel to have done that. It still ran controversial creature features and terrible celebrity gossip, and the tone of the articles was inflammatory in a way that made George think of Rita Skeeter's flair for drama, but it was read.

"Why are you looking for a job?" he asked, only realizing after a second that this was an abrupt question, coming rather late.

"I am not really suited for teaching or ministry work," she answered, unperturbed. "So I need to look around a bit for what to do with my life. My mum was a charms inventor and my dad started a magazine, but I never was very good at keeping track of details the way you do with either of those professions."

"You did good work writing with the Quibbler--why did you retire?"

"I think I did the Quibbler stuff for my friends," she said, gently brushing one of the Pygmy Puffs. "But once I nudged it in the right direction, I found that there were other people who wanted to do it really badly and I just thought it was all right. I was thinking of going out on some research trips to write some articles."

"Yeah? Anything stopping you?"

"Just that I don't particularly want to. Not by myself, anyway."

He tasted blood, for just a second, heard a shrill sound cut in half.

"I don't blame you," he said, trying to blink back the memory.

The light from the high windows was hitting her silver-blonde hair so it glowed, and he noted a very small patch of magenta cloud still caught in her curls. Her lips pursed over the pygmy puff, a soft pink interruption in her somewhat sharp, white face.

"George, I'm going out for a smoke since you're here," said Ron.

George hadn't realized he was having a moment until he felt an instantaneous desire to strangle his younger brother.

"Fine," he said. "We don't need you, anyway."

"I literally just finished cleaning up after Luna," Ron snorted, and stalked away. "You're both welcome!"

Anyway, George had no business noticing the light on his newest employee's hair. He showed her how they fed the pygmy puffs and cleaned the cage, before retreating into his lab the second Ron seemed to be coming back in.

But later that afternoon when Ron had left he went down to see how Luna was faring training with Rhodendra, a cousin of Lee Jordan's who was fresh from Hogwarts and a whiz with the calcu-labe. He foresaw losing her to Gringotts or a newer financial firm. These were making an appearance in the wizard economy as it flourished after the rebuilding. He had seeded money into one of them himself.

School had let out for the day, and some London-local wizarding children had come through The Leaky Cauldron to hang around and play with some of the toys. Luna apparently was getting on with Rhodendra just fine. The two of them were seated on the floor surrounded by these children, playing a fierce round of Incendiary Snap, which was a brilliant idea Ginny had started by accident. It was particularly brilliant because it didn't just add an extra edge to Exploding Snap, with the very real if child-safe fire, but it also eventually charred the cards to the point where they had to be replaced.

The Snap happened. As Rhodendra shrieked, batting away the illusionary fire, Luna Lovegood summoned a Shield Charm with deceptive ease.

"Did I win that round?" she said, mildly surprised.

"Oh, please," said Rhodendra. "You've won every round. My cards are getting too hot to hold."

"Can we play now?" asked one of the nine or ten-year-olds.

"Sure," said Rhodendra, getting up. Luna followed her example, and they handed the "demo" pack over to the kids. During the school year, their main clientele besides parents were the children too young for Hogwarts, especially the ones with parents who didn’t let them play magical games until they were of age.

Rhodendra noticed George observing and hurried to the counter where she began doing inventory busy-work. Luna instead went to the Muggle tricks display where she seemed to be doing a deep study of the card-tricks brochure. He went back up to his lab, satisfied no personality clashes were forming.

He didn't go down into the shop later than noon for the rest of the week. Instead, if he finished work early he went to the pub to make some winning bets on the qualification rounds of the Quidditch World Cup, as everyone listened on the radio. (Occasionally he dreamed of bringing a wizarding form of television to Quidditch fans, but abandoned it. Someone would do it eventually but he preferred to live a little longer in the charmingly medieval world of wizarding technology a little longer.)

He had all but forgotten his new hire when Ron came bursting in from the cabinet.

"George, you have to come see this. I think we should keep Luna on after all!"

George was intrigued, though a bit puzzled. He hadn't realized Luna's status was probationary, though this was very Ron of Ron. Ron had hired himself on probation.


	2. George Weasley, Talent Manager

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luna gets to see some of the developments of early Weasley tech. George gets to see Luna's potential in magical animal handling.

They went clattering down the stairs to the shop’s main floor, where Luna was standing behind a cleared table, with a circle of children of varying ages. As they got closer, George realized she was doing Muggle magic. Her soft voice pattered through a nonsense description of space and time, while the cards seemed to leap from her hands–not necessarily that strange to a wizarding audience, but different cards seemed to leap out of the deck and show themselves as she said words related to hearts or kings or seven and so on.

“Not that,” said Ron, annoyed. “It’s the Pygmy Puffs!”

George went to the big glass enclosure, and peered in. The coloration and markings range seemed to be normal but…

“Gobstopping Goblins,” he whispered.

There was a nest of baby Puffs in the corner, just naked tiny bean-blobs. All Pygmy Puffs until now had been magically altered Puffskein young. The best results were at about two weeks before birth, but the range of about two weeks around that date was usually fruitful. The tricky bit was transforming only the developing young, not the parent. Never had he dreamed they could actually reproduce the Pygmy mutation naturally.

“Are you telling me that Luna is in some way responsible for inducing the Pygmys to have offspring?” he asked Ron, trying to imagine this process.

“She thinks it has to do with telling them fairy tales. I think it has more to do with the fact that she’s built them little homes.”

Sure enough, there were little decorated boxes, two large enough to hold a whole pack of Pygmy Puffs, two smaller as if for a nuclear family unit. The nest appeared to be made from the shreds of one of the smaller boxes. The tiny hairless creatures he assumed were the natural children of some couple within the glass container were being hovered around by two pink Pygmy Puffs, who had floated to be between his large head and the nest so he could no longer see it directly.

“You know, I think you’re right. Probably you’re both right.”

He stayed until Luna had finished her magic show, to ask her some more questions.

“What do you think?” she asked. “Is my Muggle magic pretty good now?”

“I saw you finessing that with some summoning,” George said severely. “Which just goes to show you are a very skilled witch, since that’s not easy real magic, either. What about these guys? You’ve been giving them the birds and bees talk?”

“Just a little privacy and folklore to build their culture on,” she said, reaching down under the mesh top of the cage to let some of the little fur balls cluster against her fingers. “I thought about separating the males and females but Ronald said you didn’t know a way to determine sex. Besides, we don’t know if they have a binary breeding system.”

One of the pink parental puffs bobbed over to Luna’s hand cautiously, zoomed at her as if beating her off, and rushed away again. Luna slowly withdrew her hand.

“I don’t think they are smart enough to recognize a person,” she said somewhat sadly.

“They’re probably smarter than they let on,” said George, who had never seen the puffs so interested in a human. There was a bit of an issue of bonding with the puffs, which wasn’t bad for shop profits, but wasn’t quite what he liked as an inventor. Puffskeins seemed just barely large enough to have the brains to recognize a familiar human. Pygmy Puffs, not so much.

Maybe they were usually just too immature.

“Was there anything else?” Luna asked.

“Sorry?” George was a little startled.

“You came down here in such a rush, and I hate to keep you from your work. Ron said you only come down to work in the shop when it’s really crazy.”

“Well, yes,” George said. “Rather. Summer hols coming up, will need to be up to snuff so we can just offload our goods on the children who will be loose for a few months.”

“So was there anything else you needed to ask me about?”

“Nothing I needed to ask, but plenty I’d like to,” he said, grinning. “How long did you practice the cards before coming up with that little twist?”

“I bought a pack and the pamphlet and took it home,” said Luna. “So I’ve had a lot of hours at home working on it.”

She seemed to be apologizing for not being an instant expert.

“I have never seen anyone over the age of fourteen put so much effort into card-tricks before. I am impressed.”

“Oh,” said Luna, nonplussed.

“I was also going to ask you to consult on my ideas for a new mothers line of products, but somehow I don’t think you’re the right candidate for that.”

“Can I see your workshop, though? I’m very curious about that,” Luna said. “Ronald said you wouldn’t want to be disturbed but he just went to get you so you’re already interrupted.”

“Certainly you can.” He was pleased, really. “I just got off the phone with Neville, but maybe you can give me an opinion on the algae pet I’m developing.”

“A phone?”

“Not a Muggle phone,” George hurried to say. “I’ll show you what I mean with that, too.”

“I’d like to talk to Neville, too,” she said. Her always slightly wistful voice was not necessarily more melancholy as she said this, but he was strangely afraid it was.

“Rhodie, we’ll be back in a jiff,” George called out. “I’m curious about our numbers of Pygmy sales to availability over the summer last year, if you have a minute to check on that.”

He ushered Luna up the cramped stairs in the stock-room, where the muted sounds of children shouting at the Snap made the sense of having slipped out of the world more acute. He always felt that a little, coming up here, but leading a newcomer through the maze of boxes with their slight coating of inevitable dust, the sound of their footsteps in the heavy quiet, made it stronger.

“Did you have this one made?” Luna said when they came to the cabinet.

“Well spotted,” said George, fairly sure he should be feeling a little shame about conspicuous wealth right now, but just feeling a bit pepped up. “It’s pretty new. We had to actually do a lot of research and a little guesswork to get it made. Very complicated magic, have a feeling the originals were dark in nature. Nothing a little ingenuity couldn’t fix!”

He opened the door. “Usually I’d say, after you, but always watch a man go first into his vanishing cabinet. I’ll leave the door open on the way out.”

He stepped through.

For a few moments, he was unsure if she’d lost her nerve to come. Or something bad had happened with the cabinet.

Then she stepped out nonchalantly, staring at the lintel of the door keenly, as if she’d been inspecting it.

“That felt like nothing. Really, apparating could well be replaced by a few of these in wizarding gathering places and we’d all be so much more comfortable.”

“True,” said George.

Now a pang of consumer guilt hit him, so he did not volunteer that to keep this one working accurately he had to limit daily use. Luna took in the room around them and he considered it himself. It was cleanish and brighter than most wizarding research facilities. He had a rather large terrace-house and the attic formed his laboratory. Everything from modern muggle science equipment to herbs hung from the gabled roof, with the highest center part over the working table, where he’d installed an intake fan so he could easily air out the fumes. He’d bespelled it to also make any colorful or intriguing fumes clear.

Just the kinds of precautions he and Fred had found out the hard way in their room laboratory all those years ago.

“How do you call Neville?” Luna asked.

“Here, see this? Do you remember the extendable ears?”

“Sure.”

He held out the bits of rubber-covered foam that now were just as long as a fingertip, and brightly colored so he lost fewer of them. “It’s actually connected to the Floo network, so you may see things slightly green for a moment, but you just have to give the address.”

Luna gingerly took them but nearly immediately dropped the first one she tried to put in. George swiftly bent down to pick it up, and said, “Here.”

He brushed some of her rampant hair away from her ear and squeezed the earplug before setting it in her ear. “Like this,” he said, showing her how to compress it. She put in the other without too much issue, knowing know she could safely push it inward.

“What’s Neville’s fireplace?” she asked, a little too loudly.

“Twelve, Hogwarts.”

The earplugs didn’t really dampen sound much, so he didn’t have to yell. But Luna did, as if jumping into a fireplace, and he grinned.

“Hello, Neville,” she said next, in a normal tone of voice. “Did I startle you? Yes, it’s me, Luna. Oh, this marvelous!”

She gave George an incandescent smile, and jumped a little. “Neville, how’s Pomfrey? Oh, good. I thought that tonic should help his scalewort. I have to go. Maybe George will lend me his ears again. Goodbye, Neville!”

After a pause she said in a whisper, “Do I just take them off?”

“Yes,” he said, holding out his hand. “Before I had them turn off with a word, but it was annoying to hear other people say half the word all the time, and it’s easier if they just stop when one or the other takes them off.”

She dropped them in his hand, scrutinizing them slightly, then turned to the desk beside them. “Were you talking to Neville about this?”

The goldfish bowls with the hopeful algae pets were lined up, labelled so he could track the various tests he’d done. Currently there were twelve. The first six he’d given up on as past further experiments were now living with his female relatives, and a few were set downstairs in the shop as a teaser while they waited for Neville to come pick them up.

“Yes. It’s tricky to work with biological things. I don’t have the hang of it. Neville secretly disapproves of me messing with nature, or I’d just ask him to be my inventor.”

George raked his hair up on end as he stared at the blobs of algae that loosely resembled the heads of the Green Man but not enough.

“I suppose using a cutting charm to just fix them isn’t enough,” said Luna. “You want them to develop for real so people know what they are.”

“And it’s pretty easy to get them to look vaguely like people in an ugly way. We always think things look like people.”

“You want them to be cute? One of your mom-line?”

“Yes,” said George, a little surprised she had connected those thoughts. “If I figure out how to affect their shape more, then I can make them trolls or fairies or crones or princes. Then people can pick what they like.”

“Yes, and then people can really talk to them, like a friend.”

George had not considered this angle, but it made sense.

“Well, it’s just something I’m asking anyone for leads about. Feel free to look around and ask about anything you find intriguing.”

She pattered around, hands holding her hair back from falling on anything. It was so unconscious he suddenly saw her as a tiny witch in her mother’s test kitchen, keeping her hands out of the range of anything dangerous. He had known her mother had been killed by a failed experiment, which he had promptly tried to forget, as an inventor prone to explosions himself.

“What is this?” she asked, leaning over a pan of starts.

“I’m just trying to learn more about botany and magic. They’re violets.”

She looked up, eyes glinting. She was laughing, for some reason, about him growing flowers. The skylights diffused the light well through the room, but she was wreathed in sun, since he’d put the starts right in the path of the light.

“Well, probably should send you back through to keep Rhodie in line.” He stood, “It’s been lovely having you. And don’t listen to Ron if he says I’m not to be disturbed. I say that to him because I find him disturbing.”

Luna chuckled, and swished out through the cabinet, which he shut with deliberation. Then he went downstairs from his house and out the door to walk all the way to The Three Broomsticks instead of just going out his own shop door and turning left.

By the time his friends showed up for the late Brazil v. Mozambique match, he was three pints in. Angelina swung her way in, and halted next to George to say, “Blimey, George. Why are you sodden already?”

“Just enjoying a night off,” he said vehemently.


	3. The Difficulties of Employment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> George is getting himself drunk for reasons he can't quite articulate. Luna is being startled by green flashbangs for reasons she finds inadequate.

Halfway through the match, Angelina and Wood abandoned their heckling stream on Jordan’s game commentary to get George some fresh air and slip him a few hangover spells.

Wood went back in without much further ado, but Angelina leaned over him as he slumped on the nasty alley wall.

“What’s got into you, mate?”

“Angelina, I miss you,” warbled George.

“Jibbering imps,” she said. “What garbage. You know you and I weren’t going to work out. It was too routine. And it was weird for us without…our other friends. We’ve moved on rather well, I thought. What’s got you getting drunk during a lead-up match? Before half-time, no less? That’s not you, George. You’re worrying me.”

“I’m worrying me,” George muttered. “I don’t know what it’s about. I’ll walk home.”

“I’ll walk you.” She put an arm around his shoulders and started guiding him back down the street to his shop. He staggered slightly as they got to the door, and Angelina said, “Whoops,” as the door opened under her hand. They walked in together, and there was a startled hiccup from inside. George focused consciously–it was Luna, stooped over one of the algae pets he’d stashed downstairs.

Three things happened almost simultaneously. His traitor redhead skin blushed so hard he could see it projecting beyond his skin, Luna jumped up saying, “Sorry, I lost track of the time”, and Angelina did a double-take between them.

After Luna had hurried out the door past them, Angelina walked without hurry to the counter of the shop to get ready for a friendly interrogation. George wanted to hurl up his entire life.

“So. Luna’s gotten lovely. She working here?”

“I can't…Angelina, have mercy. I feel like a baboon’s behind.”

“Fine,” she said. “I am truly alarmed for you, George, but it’s taken a new direction in recent minutes and I am fairly sure you’ll live. So hang in there, drink some water. That’s a love.”

She walked back out. George mechanically locked the door behind her, and dragged himself up to the attic, out the cabinet, and down the stairs from his lab to his room. It felt like a very long way. He drank the water still on his nightstand from forgetting to drink it the night before, and tried to fall asleep.

He felt like hell the next morning, so he didn’t even go up to his laboratory. The next day he had some meetings, so he apparated straight to Hogsmeade, then to Godric’s Hollow. He ambled casually back in to his shop after a stop in one of the shops in Diagon Alley, saw the back of Luna, and quickly retreated upstairs again.

There was a bang downstairs the next afternoon, but he ignored it. Bangs usually meant someone was having fun, and he didn’t feel much like fun.

Then someone banged on the outside of the cabinet door, and Rhodie came tumbling in.

“Mr. Weasley, please. Something’s happened downstairs.”

“What’s happened?” he asked, insides turning to a Medusa’s head of rising worry. “Is someone hurt?”

“I don’t think so, but I’m worried–Luna’s in a state.”

He hurried even more.

The shop was a near-silent scene of chaos. Two of the shelves had been blasted awry, while Luna pleaded, “Expecto patronum. Expecto patronum!”

A shield charm was between her and the wall, where green sparks were still flying from the Wildfire Whiz-Bang, and she stood in front of a small group of children who seemed to be petrified (possibly just by her terror) into staying still.

“Was she startled by the firework?” George asked Rhodie softly.

“Yes, I think so.”

Luna’s usually soft voice was defiant, threaded with fear, as she kept asking for her guardian to come, even while she tried to hold another spell. George walked first into her line of sight from a few steps away, then knelt in front of her, to not get between her wand and the threat she thought she was seeing.

“Luna, it’s just a boggart. _Riddikulus_ , say _riddikulus_.”

He looked at the children behind her, and smiled. “ _Riddikulus_!”

One of them repeated it, and another giggled. Luna whispered first, then said loudly, “ _Riddikulus_!”

And she blinked, realizing where she was. Her wand dropped from her hand, and George started to grab it only to realize that she was dropping, too.

He caught her, the weight more than he had expected from feather-like Luna, and her fingers dug into his arms. “George,” she said.

It was a question, but not about him.

“It’s all right,” he said, awkwardly holding her up from the side. “It was just a memory.”

She straightened herself, gave a reedy laugh. “Not even a memory. Just a fear. A flash of green and a bang, like everyone’s afraid to see again.”

Not everyone had been at Hogwarts, when it all ended. And even of those, not everyone had lost people to loud bangs in childhood, like she had.

“Let’s go get you a stiff drink.”

She didn’t lean on him on their way, which disappointed him slightly. It disappointed him in himself even more that he had kind of hoped for that. Since it was unfair to Rhodie, once at The Leaky Cauldron he set her up to take a nice break with a chatty witch up from the country and went back to the shop to help clean up.

* * *

Despite hearing all about Ms. Flybybough’s garden tricks for repelling deer and snails, part of Luna’s mind was very preoccupied with figuring out how she was going to move forward from this setback. Which taught her something, at least: she wanted to stay at the joke shop. After all, it hadn’t been her idea.

“You need something to do with yourself,” Hermione had decreed, the decision in her voice the same as when she had started any new project. “And it needs to be something where you’ll be out with people. Don’t argue. I’m not sure journalists are people, and if you do all your work by correspondence you aren’t out with them. I’ll ask Ron to get you a job at the joke shop.”

The small part of Luna that always notified her when something was a bad idea, though she was going to do it anyway, flared. But she hadn’t really puzzled much over why it could be a bad idea. Her new house was too new to have any comforting build-up of memories, and though it was an easy distance to London even without apparating, she wasn’t good at organizing things, so she could only hope for other DA members to initiate meet-ups. For a while it had all been fine–being an adult and able to do whatever she wanted after graduating had been fun and new. But it had grown harder to not miss her childhood home, or Hogwarts, or even the bad days of fellowship in the Order of the Phoenix. Some, like Neville, thrived in the normalcy. She had thrived in times of disaster, as not needing to be normal.

But today she’d frightened children and had a panic attack.

And the Weasleys had been so kind, letting her come play shopkeeper. Which in Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes meant playing shopkeeper who played with toys all day. She never did anything by halves (she was a Ravenclaw, after all) so she’d figured out everything there was to know about the items in the shop, without actually interrogating George about exactly how the enchantments on things worked.

And she’d liked going up into the laboratory and seeing the as-yet-unfinished ideas sitting around, gently sparkling with potential. She’d even started keeping a little notepad of ideas, which she felt needed a bit more work. But she might have to just pull a Gryffindor and talk about them before they were ready, because she liked her job here.

She also liked George. This was not a secret she tried to keep from herself, though she did usually pack it up like a roll of parchment for safekeeping at home before going in for work every day. After all, she’d liked George for a long time–most everybody had liked one or both of the Weasley twins in her year. Well, she supposed not everyone had liked them in the same way. But there had been a definite trend she had noted, of first being celebrity-struck by the two of them, and gradually beginning to distinguish them and pick favorites. Fred, with a slightly more manic energy and a tendency to wink at anyone he caught looking was the usual first favorite, with some moving on from him to the more self-assured and devious George.

This was probably part of why Luna’s inner witch had hinted that coming to the shop was a bad idea. Other girls had moved on from their first-year crushes with a lot more grace, but….

“Blister-blots,” said the familiar voice of Ginny, its slight rasp reassuring. “You’ve made a mess of poor George’s beautiful shop. What have you to say for yourself? Oh, a Butterbeer for me, Tom. Mum’s got all the kids for a moment but she better not smell anything stronger on my breath when I get home. She hasn’t sent me a Howler since my marriage, but there can always be a first time.”

“Did George call you here?”

“Not exactly,” Ginny said, eyeing her friend dubiously. “I was out for errands and decided to drop in to see if he had a special order in for me. I’m trying to hide it from Harry until our anniversary. Harry is incredibly hard to hide things from, as one might suppose. George asked me to check in on you on my way out, which I thought uncharacteristically thoughtful of him. What happened?”

“I’m not sure,” Luna admitted. “A firework went off with green sparks in it and I just was sure I was looking at a dementor or Death Eater. I’ve never had that happen before.”

“Weird, isn’t it? Really unpredictable, what will set someone off. Harry can’t abide being in a tent but he deals with all kinds of explosions and nastiness every day. The other day I got incredibly upset, and couldn’t figure out why, until my dad pointed out my mother’s clock was jumpy about something Ron and Hermione were up to. Wish I hadn’t had to think about that, since there’s only so much danger a married couple could be up to at seven pm with their children at Granny Molly’s. Oh, sorry,” said Ginny, seeing the way Luna’s face changed color. “I have the worst family trait. ‘If I had to suffer the thought, now you do, too.’ One of the few things Ron and I share besides the Prewett nose. Anyway, chin up. George deserves to clean up after other peoples’ chaos a few times, and I despair of him ever having kids to really serve him right.”

A silence fell. Ginny took a deliberate sip of her Butterbeer and grimaced at the sweetness. Then she gave Luna a sideways look.

“Let’s take our drinks to a table, shall we?”

Luna did so, not wholly sure why but agreeable.


	4. The Dangers of Friendship

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ginny Weasley is supportive in ways that make Luna wary. Her main concern is proving to George that she's of value in the shop despite being a liability.

“Sweet Luna,” Ginny said, when they had retreated to the darkest, corner-est booth in the pub. “What has George done to you?”

“George hasn’t done anything,” said Luna, blankly.

“Ah. That’s the trouble, then?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. He’s letting me work in his shop, and my schoolgirl crush will go away, I’m sure. When I get to know him a little better.”

“Hmm,” said Ginny.

She looked down at her arm, where Luna noticed a new tattoo, in the shape of a lightning bolt.

“Does your mother like your tattoos? Ron said he didn’t have any because she’d kill him,” Luna said with surprise.

“No, my mother does not like my tattoos,” said Ginny. “But I’m not a coward, like Ronald, and she can take it up with me when she starts giving Bill or Charlie hell for theirs.”

After a second, Ginny leaned over. “Luna, you can do or not do whatever you want. But I want to tell you one thing–proximity doesn’t always show you a person is less worthy of your feelings. George…George closed off in a way, after losing Fred. So he might not be able to really show it even if he returns the interest. I can feel him out for you–” she saw Luna’s face and quickly added, “or just tell you what I think. If you ask. I might tell you even without you asking, if I think it’s important. Sorry.”

“You are free to do what you want,” said Luna, startling even herself with the severity of her voice. “But if you make George aware I took a job in his shop knowing full well I had a crush on him at Hogwarts, I will send your mother a Howler about you and Harry in the prefect bathroom.”

“You don’t know anything about that!” said Ginny indignantly.

“I know enough to tip her off.”

“You know, Luna, I’ve never seen you play dirty before. I both admire that and am even more convinced here. But I better get on with my errands. Can I walk you back to the shop?”

“I do not trust you right now,” said Luna, placidly.

Ginny grinned. “You were always way cannier than people gave you credit for. Send me some owls, even if they just bring shop anecdotes.”

Luna returned to the shop only once she was sure her face had cooled off. She found Rhodie making notes from records, and George hovering over the Puffs.

“I’m very sorry for causing you trouble, and scaring the kids,” Luna said, noticing that no one was in the shop at the moment.

George nodded, and said, “Well, I’ll leave you and Rhodie to mind things.”

“I have some ideas for new products, can we meet tomorrow to go over them?”

She only had the nerve to say it because he seemed to be hesitating. She also noted there was tension in his jaw, the hollows of his jaw even more pale than usual.

“I would be delighted,” said George. “Come in tomorrow an hour early so we can get tea while Ron minds the shop.”

Luna cleaned the Pygmy Puff case diligently until it was time to start closing up shop. Rhodie said, “We haven’t been busy, I can get everything done.”

Luna hadn’t realized how tired she was until she accepted this offer without arguing.

She apparated home, and let her owl out with first thing. Then she put a kettle on, and rifled through her herb stocks, with Levity chuckling on her shoulder or swooping away out the window for a moment before returning because it wasn’t quite dark enough for hunting yet. Then she stared at the mural she’d begun sketching on her cottage wall for a moment.

“George closed off, in a way,” Ginny had said. The reason Luna had felt embarrassed about her reaction was mostly because she’d required George’s help to return to reality. George, who wore his hair long enough to cover his shorn ear–who occasionally turned abruptly to see who was coming into the shop if he had been too absorbed in something. No doubt in her mind, he isolated himself in his laboratory partly because the coming-and-going of the shop drained him. George had been practically an adult, a real Order member, when she and her friends had been mostly playing heroes the last moment. He had lost the person he was closest to in the world, as well as having nearly lost many more family members over the course of the war. And there she was, practically untouched, and having a meltdown in his shop because of some green sparks.

Well, she was used to disasters– they seemed attracted to her like pixies to a birthday cake. This one had just happened in a way that felt a little personal, that’s all.

With a gentle whump, her father’s owl landed on the back of her chair with a fat letter. Her father’s retirement from the Quibbler years ago had set him off on a course of letter-writing and conspiracy mongering that even Luna found exasperating, so this was her signal to collect her favorite inks and a sheaf of the new spell-stable vegan papers Hermione had sent her to sample.

She began to turn all her scattered ideas into well-articulated ideas, elaborating and illuminating them into something more than sprouting starts cast across paper. She noted absently when Levity came back in from her first hunting round, as time to start wrapping up. When Levity came over and started grooming her hair, though, Luna finally looked at her clock and realized she’d worked until 2 am.

She reluctantly got up from her work, and extinguished the lights, getting ready for bed in the strong moonlight she’d known would be waiting for her.

“I don’t just want to impress George,” she told Levity. “I really do care about these ideas. I want to come up with good ideas, so that there’s more fun and wonder out there, especially for little girls.”

Levity hooted, then swooped back out the window.

Belatedly the next morning, Luna apparated into the attic space of the shop, only to realize she had forgotten her papers. She popped back, then in again, to find George leaning against his vanishing cabinet looking amused.

“I was up until 2 am working on this,” she said, to explain.

“I also slept bloody awful,” George said. “I should have just sent you an owl to say we’d meet later, like I wanted to. But I’m very glad to go get some coffee now. Have you been to the teashop Flourish and Blotts added to their back room?”

Luna had not. He showed her the way, being hailed from all directions as they went down the busy street, returning all with a smile or quip, even though in the daylight he looked wan and his eyes were clearly a little bloodshot.

The teashop was not exactly in Flourish & Blott’s back room–it was more inserted onto the backroom. Luna wondered how they’d gotten permission to do such a powerful extension charm when they backed right into London, and whether they’d had to annex any real houses so the warping that occasionally revealed such extrusions into Muggle territory was hidden.

A cheerful young witch seated them, heckling George about not hiring her a year ago “and look at me now, raking in the sickles for my good service” and winked at him before vanishing upstairs to get their drinks.

“Everyone knows you,” Luna observed.

George winced. “Yes. Mornings like this I think, what I wouldn’t give for a really good invisibility cloak.”

Luna considered him. He looked a bit hungover. But there was a sort of ruefulness to what he said that made her think it wasn’t just about being accosted loudly. The twins had always been notorious, unmissable–she hadn’t considered if that had been something they liked as a unit, not as individuals.

“Does it bother you? Having everyone know who you are, and a lot about you?”

“It’s good for business,” he grinned. Closed off, she thought. He just closed off. “Now, please tell me that intriguing pile of parchments is for me.”

She recollected herself, and neatened the sheaf before placing it on the table for him.

“This looks very exciting,” he said, and the grin wasn’t that sealed-off expression anymore, but actual anticipation.


	5. A Partnership is Premonitioned

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luna makes her big gamble. George is game to play. But business as usual is not really what they need now...

Luna was so nervous. "Did you ever ask Ginny for ideas?"

"Ginny is the most pragmatic person I know, and that ranking includes my mother. You know why Fred and I were the oddballs in our family? There are other pranksters, other jokers, other showy types. Fredand I are pretty practical ourselves, a good bit of the time. But we always had this wild imaginative streak."

George was clearly growing absorbed in what he was reading. He didn't seem to notice the shift to present tense about his twin.

The witch came down with a pot of potent herb tea for Luna and a coffee press for George, lingered for a second hoping to flirt a bit, but finally gave up. Luna watched her tea bloom in the clear pot, like a very slow-moving spell, swishing it slightly with her wand from a distance, then pouring.

"This is brilliant, Luna," George said, flipping a couple of pages over. "The fortune-telling card set particularly--and your writing is lovely. I think we can lift it almost directly to the cards for printing, when we design them. You'll get a percentage, of course. For the concept, and the design work. I'll have to get a publisher involved, but that means not having to manufacture it myself or set up the manufacturing. What we have that Muggles don't, of course, is that a little witch or both her and her friend _can_ affect the cards. I can't believe no one's thought of this!"

He set his hand down on the paper, which she'd spent extra time illuminating with lavender and mauve calligraphy, as if he was holding a beloved pet.

"You wrote here that if the cards are successful we can move on to the board and the tea packaging guide. Why do you think the cards come first?"

"Because it's a little more complex and could be very attractive visually. I noticed in school that boys were very competitive about their chocolate frog card collections, sometimes, but that girls tended to have different hierarchies around them. The ones that had deeper colors or more interesting actions. Boys picked up on these, of course--particularly if they liked trading, they'd start looking for the ones that were popular for those reasons. So you can have a sort of collector's appeal going, and possibly make expansion packs."

"Did you do well in Trelawny's class?" George asked, grin broader than ever.

"Oh, no," said Luna. "I have imagination but I'm also pragmatic in ways she didn't particularly like. I think I'd be very good at telling fortunes if I didn't want to tell people the truth about the future, and instead could just make it up. But I don't want to."

He chuckled and turned back to her notes. After a moment, George admitted, "The little dream potions were good, but lacked that complexity. And any time we tried to get them more complex it started going into territory I was pretty sure would have parents banning their children from buying from us. As it stands, they don't have longevity with kids. This feels like something that will grow up with them."

He rubbed his eyes a second, and poured out his coffee.

"Damning dragons. I don't know why saying that is making me emotional. Sorry."

"Don't apologize for feeling something. It's when you _don't_ feel something that there's something wrong. I had meant to apologize today for what I felt yesterday, but I think I won't."

"Suffice to say, Luna, this is great stuff. I can't believe you stayed up so late working on this--I hope it's because you're excited about it, too?"

Their eyes met for a long moment. She _was_ excited. She didn't know how much of that was relief, but it was not all relief. He understood her ideas, and thought she had something to offer.

"Luna," he began, but the waitress came in and said, "Are we going to get a bit of a sweet, then? Possibly a sandwich?"

"No, no," he said. "Unless…are you hungry?"

"I just ate breakfast," Luna admitted regretfully.

"Wave me down if you change your mind," said the girl, with what may have been a sniff.

"Ron was a bit miffed when I said he'd have to wait until Rhodendra came in," George said. "So I don't want to linger too long. Well, I want to, but I try not to be too terrible of a boss, even when it's my own brother."

"Do you mind if I ask Hermione about the board? She's not a fan of Divination but I'm sure she's read up on the Muggle systems to do comparisons. Their zodiacs, and so on."

"Sure, go ahead. Just make sure you don't let Ron get wind of it and put it into her head to ask for a consulting fee."

"Should we not pay her a consulting fee?"

"Oh, certainly. But I'd hate to let Ron think he thought of it first."

They went over some of her other ideas, which felt very half-formed by daylight, but which George seemed to be able to fill in with his own halves. By the time his coffee was gone, and her tea was sipped away, they were rambling back and forth in the way of dreamers, and he held the door for her as they went into the shop without missing a beat in their discussion of whether enchantment or potion-based work would be best for bubbles with images.

"George, I've got to go," Ron said, looking distressed as they walked in. "I was just going to close up until you got back."

With a crack, he apparated out of the shop.

George went very pale. He cursed under his breath and went charging up the stairs. After following him a few steps, Luna stayed where she was--she didn't even have keys to lock the shop. She grabbed some of the unenchanted playing cards and started dealing them to keep herself occupied.

Several minutes later, she heard something from upstairs like a thump, but George did not come down, so she went to check it out. After all, there was a bell up there, too. She was glad the stairs creaked a little, so if he didn't want to see her, he could go back out the cabinet.

Instead, she found him leaning on some crates, concentrating with his wand out.

"My mother is home," he told her distractedly, "she doesn't know of anything happening to anyone. I'm running out of energy to get my patronus to Ron's place."

"Ron didn't look panicked, like something really terrible had happened," Luna said. "I could be wrong, but maybe one of the little ones got hurt or something?"

George's wand hand dropped, and he rubbed his eyes with the other. Only he didn't take his hand away from them when he was done.

"You're probably right." The words sounded forced. "It's fine, Luna."

"You can go, if you want, George. I'll stay here."

He laughed--the sound as ephemeral as the large clever-looking bird that soon appeared in a swirl of silver. It pecked at his head before vanishing back into the wand, though only Luna saw that.

"Thing is, I've apparated in the middle of things where I'm not wanted before. Like you pointed out, not everything is a dark magic disaster. Sometimes it's just a broken bone or a couple's spat."

His eyebrows were knitting together, and he started to turn to the cabinet, avoiding her eye.

She darted forward and caught his arm.

"Don't," she said.

He looked down in surprise. She was surprised herself, at the strength in her hand to hold him there, at the decision in her own voice.

"Don't go to be alone. Not when you're feeling scared like this. You don't want to be by yourself, do you?"

" I don't know what else to do. I'm not fit company for anyone, not right now."

"I don't need you to be company," Luna said, astonished. "I was offering to be your company, not the other way around."

He stayed where he was, wrist caught in her hand, not moving. So she let go, to give him the choice. Maybe she misunderstood. Maybe being by himself--

He held her hand fast. Stepped forward, eyes on hers. He was too close to be just accepting her offer of company, so she folded him into a hug as he hesitated.


	6. The Future Is A Door From The Dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They abandon all pretense.

"I'm the most frightened when I'm happy." George circled her lightly with his arms in return. "Luna, this morning I was so happy. You are so wonderful, and I began to feel like ideas shone again, but I'm also just waiting to be devastated. And I don't think I'll be able to stop waiting for that."

"You don't have to stop," she breathed, though there was a pain in her chest she didn't quite understand. "You just have to fight it when it tells you to run away. You run away from the precious things in life, that way. I've seen it happen."

She'd held onto him because she hadn't been able to hold her father when he had run-- she'd been running then, too. She had been old enough to wonder about her father, but she'd closed her mind to it, because she had to believe he was as wise and good as the mother she'd lost. He hadn't been, and she still wasn't. But she was trying. And she wouldn't run away from this, not after seeing the way he could look at her.

She drew her arms back from around his shoulders, and as he straightened she caught his face in her hands. Her palms felt the fair stubble that was almost unnoticeable on his face, and she noted the redness of his eyes right along with their intensity on her face.

"George Weasley," she said, "you're breaking my heart. I stay up until 2 am to prove I'm not cracked up from my little bit of a brush with war, and here you are, all a mess because Ron's as inconsiderate as always of other people's feelings. All that effort spoiled."

He chuckled weakly.

"Are you really going to let Ron cracking off ruin your day? Or are you going to call Hermione at the Ministry and find out what's going on?"

He'd been, probably, about to kiss her. He'd been, almost certainly, sure she would let him. But she was right that until his mind was eased, it wouldn't feel safe. And if something was wrong, it would be ruined.

So he held her hand, and they went into his lab together, and he put in the earplugs and spoke Hermione's office fireplace.

"George?" She frowned at him, dark rampant hair shoved back into a comb that held it away from her face. "What is it?"

"Ron just apparated out of here looking upset. Is everything OK?"

"Oh." She looked irritated. "He must have forgot that Hugo has a half-day at school, and that he was meant to be crossing guard. I sent him an owl earlier to make sure he remembered. If he worried you, I'm sorry--there's a teacher who has been very nasty about his forgetfulness, and he probably doesn't want me to know he forgot again."

She peered at him. "You were upset."

"I was just a little startled. Sorry to interrupt you, Hermione, I'll get going."

He pulled the earplugs out. Luna was being patient in her way of slightly abstracted inattention that immediately got under his skin, wanting to claim that drifting focus onto himself. Her eyes came to his almost immediately, though. The sun from the skylight made the delicate blonde of her hair form a frame around her, the yawning dark of the cabinet behind her like a portrait backdrop. The slight smudges under her eyes, staying up to prove herself to him, formed inverse moons. Like the delicate bruising of a love mark, there was an irrevocable physical truth to them.

"Luna, can I kiss you?"

"The shop is not locked downstairs," she said, apologetically.

"I can't bear to close shop outside normal hours. When too many things in Diagon Alley are closed it brings back bad times, doesn't it? I don't care if small hooligans steal everything I have down there, I'm not going to let them steal this moment from me."

"Is it a moment of courage?"

How was it she asked things outright other people were embarrassed to think?

"Yes," he said.

"Then I think it should be rewarded," she said, and stepped into his arms again.

The pressure of her lips was a benediction and the echo of a future. The gentle scent of vetiver and menthol that always seemed to emanate from her became a taste of honeyed tea and bare skin.

She was not a deft kisser, and he startled her at first when he leaned in to taste her mouth, so he eased back. Cradled her head to ask for her trust. Got lost for a moment finding the trail of vetiver in her hair, at the tuck of her jaw. Was rediscovered in a gentle, hot moment of Luna's mouth on his neck, her hands linking tighter to keep him to her.

It had been a long time since he'd kissed someone mostly for the fun of it. A frighteningly long time. Some parts of his mind wanted to race ahead but he was glad to linger in this one moment, aware of a world that could be bright. Of one he could live in.

Through the open cabinet door, very distantly, came the sound of the shop doorbell. He placed a soft kiss on her temple. Stole one from her lips again. Put his lips to her forehead to get used to being parted.

"I thought you might not be serious about letting the little hooligans do their damage," sighed Luna.

"I'm much more scared of having to explain to Rhodie what we've been doing--or worse, my mother. I didn't tell her what the final word was on Ron."

At that moment, Ron burst into the laboratory, saying, "Sorry, George, Dad had just got a tip on something in Nocturne that he wanted me to help with--"

He looked stunned, and before he could form any words that would embarrass Luna or annoy himself, George said, "You are late to your son's half-day crossing guard duty."

Ron yelped and apparated away.

There was a gentle rocking from Luna against his chest…she was laughing.

And she looked up at him with her unreasonably large, light eyes with a fondness that he was pretty sure could lead them both one step at a time out of the dark.

"The real menace in your life," she said, "is not the return of Death Eaters, but the nosiness of your family."

"Do you not have to deal with that? I guess you only have your dad."

"Oh, certainly I have similar trials. The letter from my father I ignored last night will probably have quite a bit to say about me engaging with the wizarding mainstream in your shop, exposing myself to the toxic aggregations of cryopiskies."

"You should probably cut ties with me," he said, with a dramatic sigh. "I have one incredibly nosy sister, and two amazingly opinionated sisters-in-law you will have to deal with. And two of them are your friends, so that will be even worse."

"Are you implying you are not friends with your sisters-in-law? That will make them very downcast."

After a beat, he said, "Luna Lovegood, was that a joke? Or a threat? Was it both?"

"I think that's what Ginny said about me coming to work here," Luna said, with a dazzling smile.

And since the only hooligan barging into the shop had been Ron, George allowed his impulse to kiss her for it gain sway.

"Oh," she said, pushing him away for a moment, "I had an idea for the algae. There is this trick for transfiguring plants involving pixie teeth, and Professor McGonagall--"

"Luna, I physically cannot handle you solving the topiary pet problem for me right now. Please tell me sometime later, possibly in sixty years when our romance has grown a little cool."

Luna subsided, mainly because he was kissing her again.

**Author's Note:**

> Image of George for the header from a moodboard by renissance on Tumblr https://seagod.co.vu/post/168723892062/
> 
> Ginny heavily inspired by the depictions of blvnk-art, especially the tattoos. https://blvnk-art.tumblr.com
> 
> Vegan parchment substitute and general bonhomie inspired by Emily McGovern of My Life as a Background Slytherin https://www.emilymcgovern.com/my-life-as-a-background-slytherin/
> 
> With thanks to the Binge Mode: Harry Potter podcast for getting me through a major life transition with something to listen to in my car.


End file.
